Friday, November 04, 2016

A new GSMA study entitled “The
Mobile Economy: North America 2016” finds that mobile technologies
contributed $710 billion in economic activity (3.6% of GDP) to North America in
2015 and will grow to almost $1 trillion in economic activity (4.5 of GDP) in
2020.

Here are some of the key findings regarding mobile
technologies in North America:

In 2015, the
mobile ecosystem supported 2.3 million jobs.

In 2015, the
number of unique subscribers was 284 million and the mobile economy had a
penetration rate of 79%. By the end of 2020, those figures are expected to grow to 315
million and 85%, respectively.

The mobile economy
will invest nearly $170 billion in spectrum and network deployment from 2015 to
2020.

In 2015, the
mobile economy raised $82 billion in the form of general taxation and an
additional $46 billion in government revenues from spectrum auctions.

There are no signs
of slowing down in the North American mobile economy. Despite the FCC’s Open
Internet Order, which imposed
substantial regulatory costs on mobile broadband providers, the GSMA study
shows that competition and innovation in the mobile economy will create more
benefits than the FCC’s regulations will create costs. That being said, the
regulatory costs are very burdensome and the mobile economy likely would
grow even faster if not for the FCC’s unnecessary regulations.